8:58
by paladin24
Summary: The events of Season 8 episode 17 and their aftermath as recalled by Jack. Takes place 2 years post Day 8.


NOTES: Huge thank you to CYN, Shana, and Sophia for advice, encouragement, critiques, and putting up with my neurotic self.

Pavel is listed in 24wiki as Renee's shooter; his last name was made up by me since none was given.

This was a killer to write and I both love and hate it. I'm still terribly nervous about posting it, but as they say, here goes nothing.

I don't really like the idea of Dark Jack. To me he's a tragic hero rather than anti-hero. Even if he gets revenge...then what, after he's been so terribly damaged over the years? Blame the writers, it's what they seem to want badly enough to turn a character with Renee's level of awesomeness into a cheap plot device.

Title comes from the time of Renee's death - the O.R. door opens about a minute and half before the silent clock.

Italics denote flashbacks.

***

No one would have recognized him, even if anyone else had been in the cemetery at 4 in the morning.

The navy blue hooded sweatshirt hid his face and the heavy beard, dyed brown along with his hair, hid much of what was visible. Nonetheless, he knew the risk he took just by coming here. It was the anniversary of the day she died, and this was his second year to visit. By a combination of luck and skill, he had eluded discovery.

***

"_Jack," President Taylor said, "let me express to you how sorry I am. Chloe O'Brian told me that you were with Renee when she died."_

"_Thank you, Madame President," Jack said, and he knew she meant it. Not since David Palmer had he known a politician so capable of genuine sincerity._

"_Jack, I hope you understand. Charles Logan has worked out a deal. Pavel Ivanovich is to be transferred to Russian custody, and Foreign Minister Novakovich has promised Russian endorsement of the treaty. I'm sure you understand that we need the Russians at the table to legitimize the agreement in the eyes of China and the moderate Islamic nations. And it will help assure the acceptance of Delia Hassan as her husband's legitimate successor. If we have secular democratic allies like Sangala and Kamistan, it sets a precedent for other nations. Preventing nuclear proliferation will help ensure the safety of millions of American lives, and possibly millions around the world."_

_  
She stepped toward him and surprised him when she reached out and grabbed his hand, green eyes full of sorrow and compassion._

"_I know it's hard for you, Jack. And believe me, I feel your pain. I lost my son, my daughter, and my __marriage to this damned office. I know you were close with David Palmer. He was an inspiration to me when I served in the Senate. But we both know what it cost him. I guess I was naive enough to think that somehow doing the right thing would be easy. But you know it never is, Jack. If there was anything I could have done to save Renee, I would have done it. But I can't allow this treaty to be threatened because you want revenge."_

"_I don't want revenge," he said, pulling away. "I want justice."_

"_Jack, Renee Walker risked her life to save President Hassan and his family so that this treaty would be possible. Anyone who serves their country knows that sometimes, there have to be sacrifices. Renee knew it too, and she did her duty anyway. And that's what makes her a hero. If you do this, then you're invalidating everything that she was willing to give her life for."_

_  
A hero? What the hell did that buy you? For Renee, that bit of coin had purchased about half an hour of happiness. _

_  
He remembered a face from his time in Delta, a radioman named Sergeant Jackson, cut in half by a mortar shell because he happened to be standing on the wrong side of a concrete wall at the wrong instant. It was the first combat death he had witnessed, and there had been nothing glorious or heroic about it. _

_  
He didn't want to save millions of lives – he would have settled for just one. _

_  
His focus returned to the President and he nodded, even though he knew it was a lie. He didn't believe he could fool her anyway._

_  
He knew she was right. He just didn't care anymore._

_  
She softened again, and her warmth and compassion pervaded the room."Jack, I'm not ordering you as your President....I am asking you as your friend...don't do this. If you act outside the law now, I'll have to stop you. Go home. Be with your daughter. Your family needs you. And I promise once this is over that my administration will do everything in our power to find a way to punish those who are guilty. You have my word."_

_  
For a moment he wanted to agree with her. Only for a moment. "Thank you, Madame President," he said. She offered him her hand again and he took it, both of them knowing he had not given her an answer._

__

***  


He had known her for less than two days. Odd how he kept having to remind himself of that. Strange how he could say things to her after such a short time that he couldn't tell most people he'd known for years.

How many times had he wondered what might have happened had she answered her phone when he had called her before that fateful day? How much time might that have bought them together? Days? Weeks? Months? None at all? Might, by some unforeseen caprice of fate, have she survived? 4 in the morning...would she be sharing his bed now, curled up against him, having fallen asleep to his rhythmic breathing?

He felt the familiar tightness in his throat as he looked down at her headstone.

***

_  
Later on he had returned to the apartment. It had taken a monumental effort to summon the willpower to step through the doorway, but there was something he needed._

_  
Everything was as he'd left it. The shattered glass from the bullet-riddled windows crunched under his boots. He tried to keep his gaze focused straight ahead, not to look down at the bloodstains on the hardwood. With grim determination he forced himself to continue to the bedroom. Her clothes were still strewn haphazardly across the floor. The sheet was missing...she had wrapped it around her body when she answered the phone, and it had gone with her to the hospital, had been soaked with her blood. He felt the compulsion to take a seat, and easing himself down, he noticed the disturbance in the alignment of the pillow on the other side and saw where the tan blanket had been moved when she pulled the sheet out from underneath. Until Renee that side of the bed had gone untouched._

_  
He tried to concentrate on the task at hand. Reaching under the bedframe,he removed the Mossberg pump-action shotgun and grabbed a box of 12-gauge shells from the top drawer of the nightstand. He did not leave at a run, but on the way out he only stopped to grab the picture of Teri from the bookcase. As he turned to head out the door, he saw Renee's cup of coffee still sat on the countertop, having cooled to room temperature several hours ago. Next to it were two glasses of water._

_  
He didn't bother to close or lock the door behind him as he left. He didn't look back. _

_***_

_  
What happened at his apartment was certainly not what he envisioned. _

_  
He would make them some coffee. He would get them something to eat. He knew she would be exhausted, so he would let her have the bed and he would sleep on the couch. Having established some sort of normalcy, they could perhaps begin tomorrow to attend to all that had surfaced between them._

_  
He hadn't expected the undercurrent of awkwardness, either. In a running gun battle, their teamwork was always seamless, intuitive even, and he had no trouble finding the words to say to her after she had unintentionally plunged a table knife into his abdomen. Yet with Renee it was the prospect of sharing a cup of coffee in his living room that seemed surreal. _

_  
He understood the blind terror that possessed her when she stabbed Vladimir again and again, he who had plunged the needle how many times into his own arm, all for the sake of maintaining his cover._

_  
But he had no idea about something so mundane as how she took her coffee. _

"_What's her name, your granddaughter?"_

"_Teri," he said. She must have seen the picture on the bookcase. "Kim named her after her mom."_

_  
Right. She had read his file, he remembered. Marika. The hospital. _

"_Jack, listen," she said, and he noticed the sudden heaviness in her voice,. He turned around to look at her. She had let her hair down and he wondered why he found that detail so relevant. _

"_I know that we have said a lot of things to each other, and you've made promises to me about...I just want you to know that I'm not going to hold you to them."_

_  
Cracks began to form and spread in the walls he habitually erected around himself. How could she think, after all that had happened, that he was anythnig less than sincere? He saw the resignation in her eyes, and with the barriers crumbling around him, he allowed himself to notice what incredible, expressive eyes they were._

_  
His last coherent thought was to wonder how, even in defeat, she could be so goddamn beautiful. _

_  
He took a step toward her, then another, though he couldn't recall making a conscious decision to move. And then there was nowhere else to go, and he felt the soft heat of her skin beneath his fingertips and the pressure of her lips against his._

_  
He felt her surprise, felt her slowly relax as her hands reached for his wrist, for the back of his head, her fingers winding into his hair as he pushed her back against the bookcase, her body molded perfectly against him._

_  
Something told him he was moving too fast, but the thought was broken and unclear, like a static-riddled radio signal. His mouth and hands were moving faster than his mind could follow. It had been so long, and that feeling of desire, so long dormant, began to awaken. She felt too good, smelled to good, tasted too good, and the blood thundered in his ears. His skin smoldered where she touched him and he wanted her more with each passing moment. _

_  
***_

_  
When Cole left a message asking him to meet in an abandoned warehouse, saying it was important, Jack wasn't sure what the younger man wanted – but for some reason, he intrinsically trusted him. _

"_Listen, Jack, I'm really sorry."_

"_Yeah. Me too."_

"_Look...Jack. I saw how the two of you were before you went home. I'm no idiot. But Renee Walker saved my life, and I think I owe her this."_

"_What is it, Cole?"_

_  
He pulled a pistol from his jacket, holding it out with the grip toward Jack. _

"_This was being held as evidence. I managed to get it out. I thought you should have it."_

_  
Jack recognized it instantly – his personal Glock, the one Renee had grabbed from his apartment and had used to rescue himself and Cole, to protect the Hassan family, and during the ill-fated rescue attempt. _

_  
He blinked, taking the weapon, handling it with something approaching reverence before slipping it into the pocket of his jacket.._

"_Thanks, Cole. But I don't want you to help me."_

"_Dammit, Jack. If I didn't have my head up my ass, I might have suspected Dana all along and maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe Renee would still be here."_

"_Cole, stop it," Jack said. "You have got to realize that it isn't your fault. Listen to me. I've served with you, and I've been in your shoes running field ops before. You're a good agent, and one of the few people I'd like to have at my side. But I have to do this alone. You have the potential to do some great things with your life. I can see it in you. As for Dana, you can either forgive yourself and move on, or you can let her get the best of you." _

_  
He tried, with only partial success, to push the image of Nina Myers from his mind._

"_What about Chloe?" Cole asked._

"_Chloe has a family. I don't want her involved in this."_

"_Yeah. So do you, Jack. What about your daughter?"_

"_Kim needs to live her own life. She doesn't need to inherit the sins of her father." _

_  
Cole studied him for a moment. "What if...dammit, Jack, you know you'll be a fugitive for this. What am I supposed to do if they send me after you?"_

"_Don't worry," Jack said. "Do your duty. If it comes down to that, I won't fight you."_

_  
Cole was silent, staring into space. It was only several seconds later that he was able to again look Jack in the eye. Slowly, he extended his hand. _

"_Good luck, Jack."_

_  
***_

_  
They had found Pavel Ivanovich first, after he had been dead for almost two days. He was discovered in a small, seldom-used office at a railyard near the Manhattan docks. He had suffered a non-fatal shotgun wound to the leg, but it had been multiple 9mm hollowpoints, delivered point-blank to the chest, that had killed him. Further examination revealed evidence of torture by someone who was a highly-skilled and experienced interrogator. Though there was little in the way of physical evidence, as Jack had been very careful, he was immediately placed at the top of the list of primary suspects._

_  
He worked quickly to find Dana Walsh. Or Rebecca Clark, as she was now known, attempting to set herself up as an experienced systems analyst in the private sector. He caught up with her near Atlanta and she never suspected that one day, when she stepped into her brand-new Ford Mustang convertible, that her car was wired. The bomb was placed just beneath the driver's seat and she was killed instantly. The resulting fire, however, had made identification of the body difficult. Explosives experts who examined the crime scene noted that the bomb was a sophisticated and well-constructed, the sort of device that appeared in classified CIA and special operations field manuals. _

_  
Mikhail Novakovich, Russian Foreign Minister, was the most difficult target. Jack managed to leave the United States and arrive in Russia unnoticed, and he wasted no time in setting up surveillance on his target, patiently stalking him from afar, learning his daily habits and routine, his security arrangements, and memorizing his itinerary. _

_  
Jack saw his opportunity when Novakovich decided to spend a weekend with his mistress at a cabin near the Baltic coast. _

_  
When the Premier and his chief of staff could not reach the Foreign Minister, they began to worry. They found him dead on his kitchen floor with two gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the head.. _

_  
Later American officials, suspicious because of his role in the attempted attacks on New York and the assassination of Omar Hassan, managed to obtain some of the case files, the ballistics reports were of particular interest. High-magnification images of firing pin marks and rifling grooves were found to be an identical match with the data on a weapon obtained in a CTU investigation of the deaths of two agents during a riverside shootout on the day of Hassan's murder. The weapon was a Glock 17 semi-automatic 9mm pistol legally registered to Jack Bauer and listed as in the possession of former FBI Special Agent Renee Walker. Shortly after the weapon was examined for the investigation it had vanished from New York CTU's evidence vault. _

_  
The same weapon was identified as the one used in the murders of several members of the Red Square crime syndicate. There was rampant speculation about how Jack Bauer could have discovered such information considering the group's well-known vow of silence, but the final conclusion was that he was able to force Pavel to talk._

***

Jack never returned to Los Angeles again.

He knew it would be better for Kim and her family not to see him like this, hunted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies from two countries. He preferred, when he thought of it at all, for her to remember him as he was before – before the man he'd been had vanished into the darkness of his despair.

Furthermore, he knew he that he would never be able to establish any kind of emotional connection with Kim, or even with his beloved Teri. He was now no more than an empty shell of a man. He barely spoke to anyone, unless it was a necessity, and he spent much of his time alone in whatever room he was sleeping in, his only companions a legion of his own demons, and, on progressively rare occasions, the few comforting memories he chose to carry with him.

***

_  
Renee?" he asked._

"_Mhmm?" she said, into his shoulder._

"_Look..Renee....with all that happened earlier...I have to know something."_

_  
Her eyes met his. "Know what, Jack?"_

"_Are you sure...that this is what you really want?"_

_  
Her hand reached down between his legs, sliding along his length, and he thought if he got any harder he would break. She leaned forward, pushing him down onto the bed, and whispered in his ear. "What I really want, Jack, is for you to make love to me."_

_  
And she raised herself up, throwing one leg over his hip, straddling him. She lifted up just enough to allow her hand, still wrapped around his cock, to guide him into position._

_  
With agonizing slowness she lowered onto him, and for a brief moment he was terrified that he would lose control of himself right then and there. She was so wet, so tight, so hot on him, and he bit down onto his lip, almost hard enough to draw blood and he had to fight to hold his eyes shut. He knew if he looked at her now, perched atop him, red hair falling against her perfect breasts, head tilted back, eyes closed, a cry of pleasure escaping her lips as she felt him fill her, that he would have absolutely no chance....for a moment she was still, allowing them to get used to each other, and slowly, at first she began to move atop him, and he began to regain a measure of self control as his hand reached up, to the back of her head, fingers entwining themselves in her hair, pulling her down to devour her mouth again, his tongue sliding against hers as his hips matched her rhythm, and he felt himself falling, deeper and deeper into ecstasy. He could hear her moaning in pleasure, her movements becoming more urgent by the minute, until she was calling out his name as she tightened irresistibly around him, and it was only then that he opened his eyes, burning the image of her into his mind, and as he looked deeply into her eyes, his breath ragged as he called out to her, and it was too much to hold himself back anymore._

***

The world seemed to shimmer and recede around him into a strange haze as the tears obscured his vision and his legs gave way from under him.. His fingers clenched, spasmed, nails digging into the wet grass and plunging violently into the cool dirt.

***

_  
They lay there a moment until she rolled off of him onto her side. _

_  
You okay?" he asked, shifting to face her. He kissed her again, both of them still flushed and breathing heavily. _

"_Perfect," she said, and the smile she gave him threatened to liquify his spine._

"Promise?"

"Mhmmm"

_  
It was then he noticed his mouth was bone dry. "I'm so thirsty," he said. _

"_Me too," she whispered, still smiling, and he found himself wanting her again._

"Let me get you something to drink."

"_Sure" she said, and the sparkle in her eye and the sweetness in her voice was something entirely new to him, like so many other things he had learned about her in the last half hour. He knew that he was falling for her, deeper and deeper by the second. And he wanted to know everything about her, everything there was to know. _

"_Okay," he said, unable to resist kissing her one more time, and he somehow convinced himself to climb out of the bed. "I'll be right back."_

_  
***_

_  
The sharp, crisp, snapping sound of glass breaking._

_  
A muted "Uh!" then a gasping cough, and a thud as something heavy hit the floor._

_  
A small, jagged hole in the window._

_  
A bare foot protruding from the bedroom doorway. _

_  
He would never be able to forget the terrible wrenching sound of her gasping for air or the image of blood pouring from the corner of her mouth, deep scarlet against her fair skin. He remembered yelling toward the phone for the caller – only later would he learn that it was Chloe – to call a trauma unit. He remembered Renee trying to tell him something, but all she could manage to say was his name._

_  
Jack made a dash for the door as more bullets slammed into the drywall behind them. _

_  
He never thought, until then, that the hallway seemed so goddamned long. She was still hanging onto his shoulder, but he could feel her slipping._

_  
He would never remember the journey down through the building or how he managed to get them into the taxi without being hit._

_  
The tires screeched as the driver gunned the engine, felt the big Ford swerve into the oncoming lane when they got stuck at a light. _

_  
He kept telling her again and again that she was going to make it, even though he had seen enough gunshot wounds to know the truth. He thought by repeating that same mantra that he could drown out the more pragmatic voice in his mind that told him he was losing her. He tried to ignore the wetness against his chest where her blood was soaking through the fabric of his shirt as he pulled her upright, rocking her against him. _

_  
Arrival at the ER was a blur of shocked faces, raised voices, and the waiting room was jam-packed, but one look at Jack's face and the scarlet stains on his face and body was enough to make everyone clear a path for him. The staff wasted no time asking questions, they simply took her from him and shoved him aside as he tried to tell them she had been shot and there was no exit wound. . _

_  
He stood in the hallway staring at the ridiculously tiny window of the O.R. door. The bare white walls and cold florescent lights only served to remind him just how utterly alone he felt. She was fighting for her life not thirty feet away, on the other side of an inch-thick door, and there wasn't a fucking thing he could do for her except wait, helpless and terrified._

_  
He forced himself to sit down in one of the uncomfortable blue plastic chairs. His hands gripped the edges of the seat as he tried to still himself, knuckles white, and each second seemed to stretch unbearably. The ringing of his cell phone was a merciful distraction. _

_  
Chloe. He tried to find some measure of comfort in the familiar voice. _

"_How is she?"_

"_Not good."_

_  
He had just asked about the Red Square file when he heard the door swing open. _

"_I'm sorry. She didn't make it. There was just too much arterial damage and blood loss.."_

_  
He could lie to himself and deny that, secretly, he already knew she was gone. He could feel his throat closing and as he walked toward the now-open door, everything became out of focus, almost dreamlike, as if he wasn't there at all and instead trapped in a nightmare by a mind that was still struggling to process all that had happened. Only minutes ago she was in his arms, in his bed, so very much alive, and now she lay lifeless, motionless, _

_  
It wasn't what she deserved – not like this, in an empty operating room, wrapped in nothing but a sheet, with him the only one at her side. _

_  
At least they had cleaned the blood from her face._

_  
For an instant he thought she might wake up and let him see that brilliant, totally unexpected smile again. As he leaned down to kiss her forehead he inhaled the faint but distinctive smell of her hair. That was when it hit him; that was when he knew she was gone. He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against her as the tears overtook him, his body shaking, doubling forward, feeling her loss like a physical blow, a deep, bloody bruise that would not heal, a final scar that would not fade._

***

Slowly, his mind returned to the present. He glanced at his watch. The sun would be rising soon and he would head south, leaving the frozen emptiness of the past behind him, deeper into the country, finally crossing into Mexico from Texas. Seeking a warmth he knew he would never find. He wasn't sure where he would go from there.

He wasn't sure it even mattered.


End file.
